International Conference on Peoples’ Struggle Against Imperialist Attacks in the Middle East

Peoples of the Region Should Act Together

The Conference on Peoples’ Struggle Against Imperialist Attacks in the Middle East in Istanbul in 9th-10th June, has ended with a declaration emphasising joint struggle.

Organised by the Labour Party of Turkey and the Workers Communist Party of Tunisia, the Conference ended after the sessions of the day before with a final declaration. The necessity to struggle jointly against imperialism for the peoples of the region has been emphasised in the second day of the conference, too.

The emphasis on joint struggle

Jelloul Azzouna, head of the Free Writers Association of Tunisia stated that the USA did not mean to abandon Iraq and he guaranteed that they would as journalists from Tunisia continue to struggle together with other journalists against the occupation. He also declared that the way to throw off the occupation was to act jointly.

Mansour Attassi, from the Syrian Communist Organisation, said that the USA evolved projects such as the Expanded Middle East Project for the existing petroleum in Middle East and set out to invade in order to implement these projects. Attasi emphasised the collective struggle declaring the necessity for USA and Israel to abandon the region for the ceasing of conflicts, splits and terror.

Abdallah Elharif from Morocco, Party of Democratic Road, expressed that the occupations in the Middle East showed the region was very important from the strategic, military and commercial point of view and also said ‘USA’s democracy understanding changes depending on complying with its interests. Abdallah Elharif stated that USA imperialism was the biggest enemy of the peoples and stressed in fact some forces like Al Qaida also served USA. Abdallah Elharif expressed that there were no barriers in front of constituting a huge front-line and said that either USA or its allies or puppet governments would not be able to stand up to the front-line of resistance.

‘USA serves the monopolies’

Sallameh Keileh, the Syrian independent Marxist, declared that USA got into the war to become sovereign in economics and to serve the monopolies and added what threatened the whole humanity was ‘militarised globalisation’. Abu Ahmet Fuad from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said ‘The question of Palestine is not only the question of the Arab nations but of the whole pro-liberty people. The whole region is targeted by the civil wars. Palestine is wanted to be turned into a medium so as to execute the strategic purpose of the imperialism.

Javier Perez from the Communist Party of Colombia ML denoted that imperialism did not want nations to get freedom. Perez drawing attention to the issues in fact in South America and the Middle East are very much alike, emphasised that one of the political aims of imperialism was that USA would prevent the Eastern Bloc from being reformed after its falling.

The enemies of the peoples, the imperialists and the compradors

Nedim Koroglu, vice president of the Labour Party (EMEP), made the closing speech of the two days lasting conference.

Koroglu said that in Turkey such as in all of the world, the enemies of the people was first USA, then imperialists and the compradors. Koroglu expressed that USA and other imperialist forces constructed and defended fascist and reactionary regimes in the region during the cold war era against USSR. He also reminded that the petroleum and other natural resources in the region were usurped after the fall of the Soviet Union. Koroglu emphasised that USA imperialists started new assaults in order to intercept the Russia and China in the region and implied that USA imperialists announced these assaults firstly as Great Middle East Project and then as Extended Middle East and North Africa Projects. Koroglu highlighted that 30 millions of Kurd dispersed to 4 countries in the Middle East was one of the nations that would play an important role in the democratisation of the region and said ‘Especially Kurdish question in Turkey which is brought up in recent months with cross-border operations remain unsolved and this situation has a crucial importance for the whole region’.

‘We should overcome the handicaps of resistance’

On the second day of Conference on Resistance of Peoples Against Imperialist Attacks in the Middle East, the spokesman of the “East Conference”, Prof. Mehmet Bekaroglu said that many people are dying every day in the region because of the occupation and he pointed out that the occupation is not only in military and economic way, where the loot of the museums, palaces and the cultural heritage is the most important proof of this.

Specifying that he has been traveling around the region within the scope of the East Conference studies, Mr. Bekaroglu said that one of the main problems is that almost all the countries of region are being ruled by dictatorships under different names and that all these dictatorships are collaborating with the imperialists. He said that the imperialists promised to bring democracy to the region but the questions of how this democracy would be and how it would be imported must be well discussed by the intellectuals of the region.

Mr. Bekaroglu, in addition, told that the labels of nationalism and terror weakened the resistance and what would be called as ‘terror’ must be well stated. He also emphasised the role of religion for the resistance. Having the AKP in the power has had some negative reflections such that the anti-occupation movement has not taken place in streets, he said and added that with a true perspective, the effect of religion may create possibilities.

Final Declaration of the Conference on Resistance of Peoples Against Imperialist Attacks in the Middle East

The most progressive parties of the region have gathered for the first time in Turkey in June 9th-10th by the invitation of the Labour Party from Turkey and Workers’ Communist Party of Tunisia for the organisation of this conference called ‘Resistance of Peoples Against Imperialist Attacks in the Middle East’. The representatives of different organisations, parties and academicians participated in this symposium. Participants from Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Tunisia, France and Colombia prepared this declaration as the result of their study on the region.

The Middle East and the North Africa is under the military, political and cultural attack of imperialists and zionists. These attacks have been intensified particularly after the events of September 11, 2001. The purpose of these attacks are to possess the subterranean resources and the oil reservoirs and to get the strategic points. Imperialists want to realise their targets in the region by means of the zionists. Imperialists and their alliances utilise all instruments to achieve their purposes. They proceed with military hostility, try direct occupations, apply political and diplomatical oppression and doom the peoples to the starvation and poverty with the economic embargoes. They deprive the peoples of even their human and absolute rights.

They even don’t hesitate to set the Sunnis against the Shiites and the Kurds against the Arabs while dividing people by exploiting the sect conflicts, nationalism and religious sensitivities. Their aim is to restructure and reshape the region in accordance with their strategic goals. On the other hand, they want to slander the struggles and resistances against the imperialism as ‘terrorism’. They want to achieve their goals by either suppressing the Islam and the Muslims with new ideological formations or calling them directly as ‘enemies’.

Currently, the whole region has been under the military supervision of the US. They have already taken the control of their colonial countries. In the rest of them, they get parts of their lands out of their hands and install military bases. They open ways for themselves in the region. In order to do this, they destabilise all the economic and political criteria and balances. They don’t refrain to threaten all the governments and the peoples in order to realise these aims in the region and to strengthen their authorities and hegemonies all over the world.

Besides, in our region the anti-democratic regimes and the despotic governments raise the difficulties for people in this context. The region are governed by either kingdoms or so called ‘republic’ kingdoms. Peoples living in the lands under occupation have been too much suffering. Poverty, unemployment, epidemic disease and ignorance have reached huge proportions because of the neo-liberal policies. In parallel with this, profits of major countries, wealth of imperialists and their hegemonies grow more and more.

Our peoples experience not only the economic, political and military oppression, but also a huge cultural oppression. Their cultures, beliefs and national senses are aimed to be destroyed. The imperialist forces looting museums and libraries demolish schools, research centres and universities; they either kill or imprison the scientists and the intellectuals. All the religious and civil organisations have been tried to be abolished, they have been ravaged. The educational systems of the peoples have been utterly regulated. Furthermore, all of the media institutions in the Middle Eastern countries are under control of cruel monarchs.

In spite of these negative conditions, peoples of the Middle East will never stay without doing nothing. They will get on their foot for resistance. They will take their position to defend their political, social and economic rights. The armed struggle in Iraq has discomfited the US plans. The resistance has triumphed over zionism in Lebanon, as well. The resistance has been improving and the rebellion against the occupants has been growing in Palestine. Also, the resistance movements have been becoming more disciplined and causing heavy losses for occupants in Afghanistan and Somali. In all countries of the region, the movements against the imperialist despotism have been improving more and more. These resistance movements are nominees to gain the political support of the peoples. Moreover, the minorities in the region are under the double suppression of both the imperialists and the cruel governors. The task and the responsibility of the peoples are to remove the problems in a democratic and social framework. Unless the homeland has freedom, it can never be democratic. The independence and the freedom would be meaningless as long as peoples don’t have the possession of their own local resources and wealth in all the phases. Setting the nationalism, sectarianism and religionism aside, which the imperialism has derived, developed and fed, we should unite our peoples against the imperialists and the zionists.

The struggle against the triangle of reactionism-Zionism-imperialism should be carried on with a wide front. There are some Islamic forces struggling against reactionism-Zionism-imperialism, too. At this point we should head towards the same object without giving up our own programmes and bearing in mind the dissimilarities between us and them. The basic duty of all revolutionaries in this struggle is to unite all workers and labourers on a well-grounded politics and ideology. This is the only way to reach the success.

Participants in this symposium in Istanbul support resistance movements in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Somalia and urge that people resisting against the occupation have no relation with ‘terrorism’. The real terror is the occupation and the destruction of the cultures. In this frame, the participants agree that the most important issue in the region is the Palestinian Problem. The security and stability are impossible without solving this problem. Palestinian People should determine their future on their own. The object of Palestinian people is to establish a democratic Palestinian State on the historical land of Palestine.

In this context, participants emphasise the following points:

1. The struggle of the Palestinians against the Zionists is a part and parcel of the struggle against the imperialism in the region and in the world. We support all kinds of struggle of Palestinians including armed struggle against Zionists who are usurpers and nationalists. We should not discriminate between these movements. We call these groups, nationalist, leftist and Islamic movements who struggle for Palestinian people to provide their national unity and to solve their domestic problems in a democratic frame immediately.

2. Participants protest economic and political enclosure put into practice against Palestinian people and call for annihilation of the enclosure as soon as possible.

3. We approve the resistance in Iraq. That the occupiers leave Iraq immediately is the first stipulation to solve the Iraqi people’s problems. Again, participants call for all forces in Iraq to put aside sect, nationality and religion problems and to unite. They protest the deaths of civilians. Actions targeting the civilians cause the rightfulness and legitimacy of the resistance to abate. If the unity is carried out, victory will come very soon. This victory will be a great shock against the plans of the USA imperialism in the region.

4. We support the struggles in the other resistance fields in the region, in Afghanistan, Somalia and Lebanon, and underline that peoples in the region have the right to resist. Particularly we cordially celebrate the Lebanese people who fought against Zionist Israel and won the victory last summer.

5. The Conference protests against the threats of the USA to Syria and Iran and these threats are severely condemned no matter what the excuses are. To change the regime in Iran and Syria is essentially the Iranian and Syrian peoples’ own problem. This issue should by no means be interfered by any external forces.

6. We condemn attacks and occupation that are aiming to take over the natural resources of Sudan and invite peoples in the region to know each other and to establish strong relations. We should act together against common enemy. We support all kinds of the struggles of the peoples in the region to get cultural, social and political rights.

7. We condemn the tyrannical attitudes of the governments in the region towards civil and political oppositions. The political trials in Morocco should be stopped immediately. We want similar trials in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Turkey and the Gulf countries to be closed at once. We call upon those who were forced to leave their countries due to their political thoughts to go back to their countries at once and those who are in prison to be released.

8. Participants support the self-determination right of all peoples in the region.

9. Lastly, participants wish such conferences to be carried with more participants and with deeper contents every year.